Launching your fashion brand in China: Advice from Tmall Luxury

China is a challenge in itself”. This verdict is that of Nicolas Santi-Weil, CEO of the independent brand Ami Paris, keen observer of the Chinese market since 2007 and participant of a webinar organized by Tmall Luxury. Titled "China and luxury: major trends and sharing of experience", this workshop in French was a first for Alibaba's e-commerce platform. The Chinese e-commerce giant, which boasts 10.1 billion euros in profits in the third quarter of 2020, hosted the webinar on March 23 to decipher and understand the luxury market in China. At the table, in addition to Nicolas Santi-Weil, the company had notably invited Bruno Alazard, Chief Client & Digital Officer at Kenzo and Pablo Mauron, CEO Digital Luxury Group China.To get more fashion news today, you can visit shine news official website.

Created in 2017, the Tmall Luxury Pavilion platform provides international brands a gateway to the luxury e-commerce market in China. Its new retail orientation - a combination of online and offline by integrating data and logistics into a single value chain - gives experiential luxury a prominent place. In other words, the site does not follow a product-oriented customer journey, but is centered on an immersive and experiential personalized journey made up of augmented or virtual realities, 3D views, digitalization of physical points of sale, customization options, etc..

To measure the importance of China as a market, the Tmall Luxury teams recall a few figures. Chinese consumers accounted for 33 percent of global luxury purchases in 2019, according to international consulting firm Baine, and are estimated to represent 46 to 48 percent in 2025. There is also a phenomenon: repatriation, which occurs in particular because of the pandemic, from this follows the estimate that between 55 and 60 percent of the consumption of luxury goods in the future is expected to take place in mainland China.

But launching a fashion brand in China presents some issues. The country is a "jumble of applications, tools and festivals”, underlines Nicolas Santi-Weil of Ami Paris. To identify some avenues for reflection, FashionUnited lists five strong points from the Tmall Luxury workshop.

Pay attention to customer feedback and word of mouth
According to Pablo Mauron, in China, niche influencers are replaced by the concept of "key opinion customer". Also known as KOC, the term refers to everyday consumers whose primary value lies in their reliability and trustworthiness (definition by online media Medium). KOCs are consumers who decide for themselves which products they want to try and evaluate, the size of their community is not important but their opinion is listened to because it is considered credible.

Pablo insists on opinions and the importance of word of mouth. According to him, this is particularly linked to sophisticated content with high added value that will generate interest among users. He also advises to motivate and reward Internet users when they share their positive experience of the brand.

Offer qualitative content
"The content has to be able to support the buying attention," says Pablo. He reminds us that the online experience has become very immersive and is no longer just informative. Moreover, the Tmall team emphasizes in the introduction that the goal of the platform is "to entertain, engage with consumers and increase loyalty." These goals are accomplished by activating brands in a variety of ways, including offering content that resonates with the landscape and cultural context. In particular, Pablo says that working with local celebrities has a much greater impact than working with international celebrities. He emphasizes two points in particular: activation campaigns linked to events of the year such as Single's Day or Women's Day, and the fact that the content of the platform should not be limited to the visual produced.
To successfully create qualitative content on your e-commerce platform, one of the key axes is that of the calendar. In China, this is not limited to the global agenda of the year or that of the brand, it includes a large number of local key dates which have an "ultra significant impact on purchase intentions", Pablo notes. Each event requires an intelligent choice of the right medium outside of Tmall, or its e-commerce platform.

For his part, Bruno Alazard, from Kenzo, confides: "the commercial calendar is indeed very dense with extraordinary leverage effects. The key word is anticipation”. He adds: "The Single Day we had anticipated as sales but in the end, we were extremely surprised by the acceleration in sales". He specifies that for the Single Day in mid-November, he and his teams should start talking about it next month, in April.

Same experience with Ami Paris. "We were surprised at the potential,” says Nicolas Santi-Weil. He also takes into account a point that seems important to him and of which he is convinced: the fact that "these shopping festivals, this very dense calendar, can also bring growth which is not only driven by discount". According to him, if the brand has a strong traction, it is also possible to enjoy these events through exclusivity, collaboration and communication.

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